But they didn’t. And really, that’s the whole point for me as a branding / naming / customer experience advocate: the name matters.

They named and positioned the new feature as a replacement for RT. It is meant to become the one and only RT. Yes of course I understand that we can go on using the old one, and I will, because I have never RTed without commentary. But now the concept of “RT” is being stretched in two directions.

As for “it can’t be modified” being an advantage, that’s a philosophical choice on the part of Twitter – one that I strongly disagree with. The Twitter I know / expect /promote is the realm of OPEN SOURCE ideas – where there is really no such thing as content “ownership”. So if I Tweet it, I also accept the possibility of alterations and even abuse, but I also know that my friends are out there to watch my back.

I actually find this obsession with attribution very quaint (and therefore will damn it with quaint praise).

#1 – It can’t be modified. Yes, that’s a feature. Because old RTs can be modified, comments can be added, which is good. But the meaning of the original can also be changed, accidentally or maliciously, which is bad. When you look at a TitterRT, you know you are seeing the original tweet.

#2 – It can’t be modified. Often, the only reason to change an original is to shorten it. How often have you spent 10 minutes editing an RT just to make it fit? And how often have you NOT been RTd becase it was too much hassle? Twitter’s RT is a link to the original, so there’s never any need to shorten.

#3 – Look at your web sidebar. Observe the “Retweet” link just below “Favorites.” Click it. Ooh and Ahh.

#4 – A TwitterRT also creates an old fashioned RT on the public timeline. This copy may be truncated. But it is searchable. You can see both TwitterRTs and Good Ole RTs of your (or anyone’s) tweets with a search on “@_____”

#5 – When you want to append a comment, The old fashioned RT is still available, and will show up the old fashioned way.

That’s why RT is so revolutionary. It has room for nuance, discussion, challenge, irony, whatever.

So, go ahead, Twitter. Implement your new feature. But fix the button: it should just be “Like!”

But there’s also Ev’s “attribution” play that puts a disturbing new top-down angle to all of this that will favour celebrity tweeters over the rest of us that hope to bask in their light. By a) attaching their avatar to the photo (not mine), and b)not allowing us to edit or comment, this move makes an RT more of a monologue from lofty Tweeter than a conversation between equals.

I’m completely for RT’s having a proper link back to the original, but the current strategy has the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle (or something like that). The commentary is critical, and can be very effectively used (as you aptly showcase on a regular basis).

I’m still frustrated (being polite here) that they all but eliminated the link back with replies when the “fixed” them, making it all but impossible to follow a dialogue unless you happen to already follow all participants.

The profound value of Twitter is in the conversations and it puzzles me why many of the so called improvements seem to work to stifle, fragment, and largely obfuscate them.

In attempting to understand the “why” behind this the best that I’ve come up with is that there are a goodly number of “obvious” ways that things “should” work that depend on the type and scope of the individual users. And the key decision makers have a particular bent that’s at odds with many of their users.

Either that, or as I strongly suspect is the case around replies, it’s driven more as an attempt to assist with company server capacity issues that it is to deliver end user features. Again that emPHAsis thing.

cheers,
Andrew